Mehren (Westerwald)

coat of arms	Germany map
	Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′  N , 7 ° 31 ′  E
Basic data
State :	Rhineland-Palatinate
County :	Altenkirchen (Westerwald)
Association municipality :	Altenkirchen-Flammersfeld
Height :	230 m above sea level NHN
Area :	3.67 km 2
Residents:	495 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density :	135 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code :	57635
Area code :	02686
License plate :	AK
Community key :	07 1 32 069
Community structure:	4 districts
Association administration address:	Rathausstrasse 13 57610 Altenkirchen
Website :	www.fachwerkdorf-mehren.de
Local Mayor :	Thomas Schnabel
Location of the municipality of Mehren in the Altenkirchen district (Westerwald)

Mehren in the Westerwald

Mehren (aerial view)

Mehren is a municipality in the Altenkirchen (Westerwald) district in Rhineland-Palatinate . It belongs to the community of Altenkirchen-Flammersfeld .

geography

Mehren lies on the northern edge of an extensive forest area ( Staatsforst Altenkirchen). The Mehrbach flows through the village and feeds a pond below the rectory . Neighboring towns are Fiersbach and Ersfeld in the north, Kraam in the northeast, Ziegenhain in the southeast and Hirz-Maulsbach in the west.

The districts of Adorf and Seifen belong to Mehren.

history

After the first written mention so far in 1265, the place celebrated its 750th anniversary in 2015. It is assumed, however, that the area around Mehren was already settled in Franconian times. The place was probably created at the time of the Great Migration . Even during the Carolingian district administration, the Mehren area was likely to have formed a Germanic manorial estate . After the division of the Middle Kingdom around 870, the counts of the Auelgau were able to settle and develop this part of the country. This probably also belonged in the 11th / 12th. Century the construction of the local church.

Only in 1406 was a Rorich Henrici de Meerne (... von Mehren), priest of the diocese of Cologne , named, and in the following decades several other judges were named Mehren. Double trenches , popularly known as Roman trenches , gave evidence of nearby border fortifications between Kurköln and the County of Sayn , which are said to have been built between 1300 and 1500.

A number of different forms of the place name are known: 1265 Mirne , 1274 Merne , 1316 Meirne , 1359 Merin , 1406 Meerne and 1430 Meirren . In documents from the church village of Flammersfeld , Myrne appears in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Myrl appears on a map . From the latter it was concluded that the name indicates a Frankish-Christian foundation, which took place in honor of Mary, the mother of God , and therefore Mehren is a derivative of Mary . This contradicts the fact that the brook names are usually older than the place names borrowed from the brook name, the name of which can be derived from an earlier swamp area in the source area. The name Forst Mehren, later the place name of Forstmehren , indicates a royal estate at that time.

A small moated castle is said to have once stood in Mehren directly on the Mehrbach , which served as a residence for the lower village nobility . Of this, however, no remains have survived, and the only reference to this building is found in a plat of land registry Altenkirchen called a parcel of land "in the castle meadow".

1931 was Mehren own mailroom Class II in the district of the post office Asbach .

Jewish community of Mehren

At times in the 19th century there was a small Jewish community in Mehren. The number of Jewish residents developed as follows: in 1837 there were 19 (out of a total of 230 inhabitants), 17 in 1858 and 15 in 1895. At times there was also a prayer room. At the beginning of the 20th century there were still several Jewish families living in Mehren. All Jewish families, some cattle dealers, were integrated into the social and economic life of the community; the community was also able to set up a Jewish school in a house of Christian fellow citizens. Until the synagogue in Altenkirchen was completed in 1884, people of the Jewish faith came from the surrounding communities of Flammersfeld and Oberlahr to Mehren on Sabbath day to celebrate the Sabbath. In 1925 there were no more Jewish residents in Mehren.

Population development

The development of the population of the municipality of Mehren, the values ​​from 1871 to 1987 are based on censuses .

year Residents 1815 191 1835 257 1871 286 1905 273 1939 243

year Residents 1950 276 1961 243 1970 279 1987 320 1993 446

year Residents 1999 498 2005 497 2011 504 2017 468 2019 495

politics

Municipal council

The municipal council in Mehren consists of eight council members, who were elected by a majority vote in the local elections on May 26, 2019 , and the honorary local mayor as chairman. Until 2009 the council had twelve council members.

mayor

In the direct election on May 26, 2019, Thomas Schnabel was confirmed in his office for a further five years with a share of the vote of 85.71%.

coat of arms

The center of the town's coat of arms is the Romanesque church with its half-timbered store. The round medallion in the right field of the coat of arms comes from a grave slab in front of the chancel within the church, which is supposed to cover the grave of Johann von Mehren . The depicted finial and the crossed keys are supposed to represent the power of the keys and the spell of life. The pitcher pictured left with the initials of the British King and Elector of Hanover, George II ., Points to the 1737 Founded in Mehren Kannenbacker guild back. With the green of the left field, the color design relates to the landscape of the Westerwald, the central yellow field is a reference to the “gold” of the wheat fields, and the blue right part is a symbol for the water of the Mehrbach.

Culture and sights

Mehren is  one of the most beautiful places in the region - especially because of the numerous and well-preserved old half-timbered buildings . This was confirmed with the two-time award of a silver medal in the federal competition " Our village should be more beautiful - our village has a future " in 1983 and 1989 as a representative of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

In the center of the village below the rectory there is a pond where the Westerwaldsteig , a 235 kilometer long premium hiking trail between Herborn and Bad Hönningen , opened in 2008 , leads past.

See also : List of cultural monuments in Mehren

Romanesque church

Romanesque church in Mehren

The Protestant parish church, built as a three-aisled pillar basilica in the 12th century from masonry and half-timbering, is worth seeing . It is one of the oldest late Romanesque village churches in the Westerwald, as can also be found in Kircheib , Birnbach , Höchstenbach or Almersbach . Your patronage can no longer be clarified with certainty. It belongs to the series of small, three-nave quarry stone buildings with a flat-roofed nave and a vaulted choir . Above this there is a picturesque half-timbered store, which was added around 1744 to get the problems with the double-tiered roof under control and to bring the choir and nave under one roof. While the nave is flat, the choir has a groin vault . Around 1910 the church was restored and the side aisles were almost completely renewed.

The casting of the oldest church bells hanging in the Mehrener church is dated to the beginning of the 14th century; it bears the inscription O Rex Glorie veni cum pace, Ych hot maria . The new rectory building replaced an old, dilapidated previous building in 1859. Like the school that was built ten years earlier, the new house was built from rubble stones. An intermediate building connected it to the parish hall, which was built in the mid-1950s and was built as an ecumenical youth camp with funds from the ecumenical council in Geneva .

Old school

The so-called “ahl schul”, the “old school”, a privately owned late Gothic building from the 16th century, stands out among the half-timbered buildings in the town . The oldest registered parish schoolmaster was Johann Jakob Altgeld, who was named in 1919.

New school

The building of the "New School", which is now privately owned, was built in 1860 after a decision had previously been made to run the school in Mehren in two classes. In August 1971, the Mehren school site was finally closed. About the relocation of the elementary school in the 1950s to the then Catholic School Weyerbusch dragged on for several years between the local community and the district and district government, because "the community has no Catholic child of school age". A settlement ended the argument; So in Weyerbusch a Protestant center school was formed for the 7th, 8th and the new 9th school year.

Bulles' ever

Below the "Old School" is the former dungeon of Mehren, built in 1547 , which was also called Bulles' Je . Even though it is privately owned today, the door of the old local prison is unlocked during the day and visitors are very welcome.

Outdoor stage

In the 1990s, an open-air stage was created in the village above the pond , which is used by many associations and cultural workers in the Westerwald.

language

According to Hermann-Josef Roth, the Mehrbach is the limit of the Cologne dialect .

Events

In addition to the harvest festival , which is celebrated every two years with an ecumenical church service and a large parade, the annual festival of lights in summer with its spectacular fireworks at the village pond under the open-air stage has become a permanent fixture that attracts attention far beyond regional borders meanwhile attracts visitors from all over Germany.

Association

Mehren has a number of registered associations which, in addition to performing their cultural and social tasks, regularly attract attention through more or less large events inside and outside the region.

Mixed choir Mehren e. V.

There has been an organized choral society in Mehren since 1887, which was re-established as a church choir in 1949 , then a year later as a mixed choir and today has 32 active and over 120 passive members. He also has a children's choir and a flute group . In addition to numerous events in the region and in Mehren itself, the Mehren eV Mixed Choir is also known for concert tours in Switzerland , the Netherlands and Austria , as well as a number of television appearances. He is one of the main cultural bearers in the Mehrbachtal .

Mehren volunteer fire department

The Mehren Volunteer Fire Brigade was founded in 1934. Due to the shift of responsibility for fire extinguishing to the administrative authorities of the local authority fire brigade Altenkirchen. It is a compulsory institution of the municipality or association and has 37 active fire brigade members in Mehren, as well as the 25-person youth fire brigade , which was founded in 2000. The catchment area includes Ersfeld, Fiersbach, Forstmehren, Hirz-Maulsbach, Kircheib and Kraam (excluding the Heuberg district). In 1995, the support association of the Mehren Volunteer Fire Brigade was founded to support larger acquisitions or projects . The Mehren volunteer fire brigade has a tank fire engine and two class 1 and 2 multi-purpose vehicles.

Other clubs

In Mehren there is also a beekeeping association . V. , the village beautification association , which offers a guided tour of the village for interested people or groups, as well as the Mehren hunting association .

Economy and Infrastructure

Mehren has a number of commercial and handicraft businesses , an elderly care center , and a hotel-restaurant in the Adorf-Seifen district. The former village shop has not been in operation for many years. A parish hall is available to associations and interested parties for events and festivities. The district road 24, which connects the town with the federal road 8 four kilometers away, leads through Mehren . The A3 and A59 motorways are around twenty kilometers away. Shops, elementary schools, doctors and pharmacies can be found in Weyerbusch, five kilometers away .

literature

• Armin Schnabel, Reinhard Kramer: Chronicle - 750 years of half-timbered village Mehren. Verbandsgemeindeverwaltung Altenkirchen, 2015, ISBN 978-3-9801596-5-4 .
• Hermann-Josef Roth: The Westerwald . DuMont, Cologne, 1981, ISBN 3-7701-1198-2 .

Web links

Commons : Mehren  - collection of images

• Literature by and about Mehren in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official homepage - Fachwerkdorf Mehren
• More on the VG Altenkirchen website
• Mehrbachtalstraße in Mehren . SWR3 broadcast "Hierzuland", March 10, 2015 (mp4 video; 6:01 minutes; 28 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} State Statistical Office of Rhineland-Palatinate - population status 2019, districts, municipalities, association communities ( help on this ).
2. ↑ State Statistical Office Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Official directory of the municipalities and parts of the municipality. Status: January 2019 ^{[ Version 2020 is available. ]} . S. 11 (PDF; 3 MB).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Erwin Katzwinkel: Mehren - Articles, reports and pictures on the history, culture and economy of a small community. More 1979.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Worth knowing - History of Mehren. Part 2. ( Memento from March 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Fachwerkdorf Mehren, November 13, 2016, accessed on January 3, 2018.
5. ^ Theo Winterscheid: From the history of the post in the Windhagener area. In: Windhagen - A home book. Economica Verlag, Bonn 1994, p. 113.
6. ↑ See Julius Seifen: Jüdische Familien in Mehren. Homeland yearbook of the Altenkirchen district 1986, p. 198 f.
7. ^ Mehren (VG Altenkirchen, Altenkirchen district): Jewish history . Alemannia Judaica , December 24, 2016, accessed January 3, 2018.
8. ↑ My village, my city: Mehren (AK) . State Statistical Office Rhineland-Palatinate - regional data, accessed on May 6, 2020.
9. ^ The Regional Returning Officer Rhineland-Palatinate: Municipal Council Election 2019 Mehren. Retrieved December 26, 2019 . 
10. ↑ The Regional Returning Officer Rhineland-Palatinate: direct elections 2019. Accessed on December 26, 2019 (see Altenkirchen-Flammersfeld, Verbandsgemeinde, 37th line of results). 
11. ^ History - Mehren Voluntary Fire Brigade (Ww.) . Website of the Mehren Volunteer Fire Brigade, January 20, 2017, accessed on January 3, 2018.